Category: Basic Science
Prior Probability: The Dirty Little Secret of “Evidence-Based Alternative Medicine”
This is actually the second entry in this series;† the first was Part V of the Homeopathy and Evidence-Based Medicine series, which began the discussion of why Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) is not up to the task of evaluating highly implausible claims. That discussion made the point that EBM favors equivocal clinical trial data over basic science, even if the latter is both...
Homeopathy and Evidence-Based Medicine: Back to the Future Part V
Homeopathy and Science: Discussion, Summary and Conclusions I was not surprised by a couple of the dissenting comments after Part IV of this blog. One writer worried that I had neglected, presumably for nefarious reasons, to cite replications of Benveniste’s results; another cited several examples of “positive” homeopathy studies that I had failed to mention. I answered some of those points here....
The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM): Your tax dollars hard at work
What’s an advocate of evidence- and science-based medicine to think about the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, better known by its abbrevation NCCAM? As I’ve pointed out before, I used to be somewhat of a supporter of NCCAM. I really did, back when I was more naïve and idealistic. Indeed, as I mentioned before, when I first read Wally Sampson’s...
Science by press release: A helmet to fight Alzheimer’s disease?
Recently, I’ve had a number of people bring to my attention a news story that has apparently been sweeping the wire services and showing up in all sorts of venues. It is, on its surface, a story of hope, hope for the millions of elderly (and even the not-so-elderly) who are or will be afflicted by that scourge of the mind, memory,...
The infiltration of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and “integrative medicine” into academia
A few years back, my co-blogger Wally Sampson wrote a now infamous editorial entitled Why the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) Should Be Defunded. When I first read it, I must admit, I found it to be a bit harsh and–dare I say?–even close-minded. After all, plausibility aside, I believed at the time that the only way to demonstrate...
Dr. Judah Folkman (1933-2008): The epitome of what a science-based physician should be
The name of this blog is Science-Based Medicine. The reason it is so called is because we, the bloggers who will be contributing, believe that “the best method for determining which interventions and health products are safe and effective is, without question, good science.” Sadly, one of the people who best represented this very sort of philosophy, Dr. Judah Folkman (1933-2008), has...
Homeopathy and Evidence-Based Medicine: Back to the Future – Part II
Part I of this blog† summarized the origin of homeopathy, invented in 1790 by Samuel Christian Hahnemann. It discussed Hahnemann’s first two “homœopathic laws of nature,” similia similibus curantur (like cures like) and the “law of infinitesimals,” and showed that his rationales for each have long been refuted. Hahnemann proclaimed a third doctrine, the “law of psora” [“itch”], said by him to...